Every day across Aotearoa, teachers walk into classrooms filled with learners who bring a rich mosaic of strengths, cultures, languages, needs and experiences.
While headlines continue to debate the state of education, and political conversations turn increasingly towards blame and constraint, the reality is that our teachers are holding together a system under pressure with the strength of their care, professionalism and deep commitment to every child who walks through the door.
Honouring professionalism in the face of inertia
We are long past the point of needing more reports to prove what is broken. The Highest Needs Review (Wylie, 2022), The Illusion of Inclusion (Hood, & Hume, 2024), and decades of evaluations such as Review of Special Education 2000 (Wylie, 2000), the Inclusive Practices Review and the Parliamentary Inquiry into Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and Autism (Education and Science Committee, 2016) have shown time and again that our current learning support system is under-resourced, fragmented and inequitable.
But teachers are not waiting around for systems to catch up.
They are innovating and problem solving every day, even while navigating funding limitations, staffing gaps and policy constraints. The stories shared in the Beyond Capacity report (Aiono, 2025) highlight this clearly. Kaiako are building inclusive environments with whatever they have. They are responding to distress with compassion, embracing neurodiverse learners with patience, and shaping classroom spaces where identity, culture and belonging are recognised and respected, even when the system does not name this as core business.
This is not something to gloss over. It is something to honour.
Classrooms continue to function not through compliance, but through the collective integrity and relational expertise of educators.
Teaching isn’t the problem, but too often teachers are treated like they are
Whether it is media tropes about declining standards, or policy rhetoric that reduces the profession to metrics and targets, there is a pattern of teacher-blaming that distracts from the deeper structural issues.
This must be challenged.
Teachers are not responsible for a learning support model designed around scarcity. They are not responsible for the delays in resourcing, the inflexible funding streams or the short-term contracts that destabilise support roles. And yet they are often left to manage the consequences of these policy choices.
The issue of inclusion is not the people. It is the design.
Reclaiming the narrative: teachers as advocates, experts and change agents
We need to shift the kōrero.
Teachers are not simply implementers of curriculum or enforcers of behaviour plans. They are highly skilled professionals who know their learners, understand the relational dynamics of inclusive practice and hold deep insights into what works and what harms.
What the Beyond Capacity report shows clearly is that many of the most impactful changes are already happening at ground level. Co-designed support plans, culturally responsive pedagogies, collaborative teaching models and leadership that values inclusive expertise are all being led from within schools and communities.
This is not about heroic sacrifice. It is about professional integrity.
We must empower teachers not just to survive the current system, but to help reshape it. Their insight, their voice and their relational leadership are essential to building an education system that serves all learners with dignity.
That means trusting teachers to use their judgement. It means involving them meaningfully in policy design, not just in consultation after decisions are made. It means protecting their wellbeing not through surface-level campaigns, but through structural change that reflects their value.
The challenges are real. But so is the strength of this profession.
Teachers are not the problem. They are the solution we have always had.
Dr. Sarah Aiono is the CEO and co-Director of Longworth Education. She is an internationally recognised leader in evidence-informed, child-centred education. Drawing on her experience as a classroom teacher working with diverse learners, she is committed to supporting educators to embed play-based approaches that nurture cognitive, social and emotional development in children.
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